454 PEOCEEDINGa OP THE OEOIOGICAL SOCIETT. 



canoes. It also appears, from the depositions of witnesses laid before 

 Parliament in 1696 in support of a petition for the removal of 

 Denver Sluice, that, prior to 1650, when the sluice was erected, the 

 tide flowed twenty -four miles further than it then did into " the 

 deep rivers of Ouse, Stoke (the "Wissey), Grant (the Cam), and 

 Mildenhall (the Larke);" and one witness deposed that before the dam 

 was built the tide flowed up to Wilton Lode, which is just two miles 

 from Brandon, and at the foot of the hill above described *. 



From these details it will be seen that these beds in every material 

 particular bear a close resemblance to those of the Somme, which 

 have been so well described by Mr. Prestwich. In each, the imple- 

 ments are for the most part found in a bed of coarse flint-gravel, 

 which rests immediately upon the chalk, and is overlain by other 

 masses of gravel and siliceous and calcareous sands. In both deposits 

 the implements are of the same material, the same, or nearly the 

 same fashion, in similar condition, and associated also with similar 

 mammalian remains, and each is destitute of those fossils which are 

 wanting in the other. This remarkable correspondence between 

 these beds in the South-east of England and those of the north of 

 Prance not only tends to confirm the opinion which has been formed 

 on other grounds, that at the commencement of the Quaternary epoch 

 the two countries had not been severed, but leads to the belief that 

 even at this early period they were inhabited by man. 



ITor is the resemblance which these valleys bear to each other 

 confined to the lower beds. In both, as we approach the coast, and 

 at about the same distance from it, the drift-gravel is overlain by a 

 thick bed of peat, which entombs the remains of ancient forests of 

 similar character, and in either country is found to contain similar 

 mammalian remains, associated with implements or weapons of 

 like material and workmanship. We have thus the same evi- 

 dence in both countries that the first known stage of the Quater- 

 nary period has passed away, and a new and well-defined era has 

 arrived. In England, as in Prance, the great Pachyderms have 

 entirely disappeared, and are succeeded by a new fauna adapted to 

 new conditions, and to be superseded in due time by other creatures 

 and other conditions. As the Beaver, Wild Boar, Bos longifrons, 

 the Eoe, and the Red Deer have replaced the Elephant, the Rhino- 

 ceros, and the Hippopotamus, so instead of the rude implements 

 fabricated by the men who were contemporary with these animals, 

 the fens of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire as well as those of Picardy 

 are found to contain the polished flint and stone implements of a far 

 later period, and pudding-stone querns of precisely similar material 

 and form. 



Such being the phenomena presented to our notice, it remains to 

 consider what light they throw upon the origin and history of the 

 implements. Hitherto it has been usual to place them in the same 

 category with the beds in, or beneath, which they occur ; they are 



* The confluence of the Little Ouse or Brandon river with the Great Ouse is 

 still known by its ancient name as Brandon CreeJc, while that of the Wissey is 

 known as Hilgay Creek, 



